Sheikh Hasina’s Assumption of Awami League Leadership
A.K.M. Atiqur Rahman
In a biography of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the writer Pupul Jayakar wrote, “I entered the hospital by a side entrance and was allowed up to the ante room next to the operation theatre, to find Sonia alone. She was in a state of extreme shock. Terrified for children, memories of the massacre of Mujib and his family including Russel, Mujib’s son, a boy of Rahul’s age, might have arisen within her.” The Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, was taken to the hospital on the morning of 31 October 1984, when two of her Sikh security guards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, shot her when she was entering her personal office at Akbar Road. Her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi accompanied her wounded mother-in-law to the hospital. At the end, Indira Gandhi embraced her death at two o'clock in the afternoon, thwarting the relentless efforts of the doctors to save her.